A little too perfect

A few ideas that struck me at this exhibition.

1/ The large format 4 x 5″ colour transparencies must be near absolute perfect exposures…. everything is there in the exposure. It’s as though the transparency is the finished print. Everything that Dombrovskis wanted to capture, he did. He was a perfectionist.

His previsualisation of the scene was exceptional. He knew what he wanted to capture, he was so focused on it. The beauty is there, but how do you make it sing? Only in a few images was I swept off my feet.

2/ His use of ‘near far’ is noticeable, taken from Ansel Adams most likely. In photographs like Morning light on Little Horn (1995), Cushion plants, Mount Anne (1984) and Mount Geryon from the Labyrinth (1986) your eye is led from the detailed foreground to the magnificent vista beyond.

4/ The wall colours of the exhibition utterly failed the work, especially with the line colour change running through the image.

5/ I never really felt the “sublime” nature of the Tasmanian wilderness in these photographs. I wanted to be transported to the place that was pictured but it never happened.

6/ I suspect this has to do with a/ the perfection of the transparency b/ the size at which these contemporary photographs were printed, and c/ the almost scientific, analytical nature of the contemporary printing.

I had no sense or feeling for place or “atmosphere” that emanates from a truly great photograph. These large prints were wholly disappointing in that regard. They were nearly all printed at the same size, too big, with the same monotonous clarity of composition and balancing of print, one to the other. Almost a clinical printing with too much colour saturation with no room for chaos or vibration of energy.

When printing, I was taught to rack the enlarger up and down to find when the print becomes like a jewel. This is a felt response to the negative, and an image can have several positions or print sizes when this may occur. To print the bulk of these digital images at the same size goes against this very intuitive response to the work.

There are so many moves that can be justified by an objective argument when making a fine art print – but which still don’t add up when you view the whole. Oh! to see five vintage prints in this exhibition, to see how Dombrovsksi would have printed them himself.

I really wanted to like these photographs but when you try and force something, it ain’t ever going to happen.

‘When you go out there, you don’t get away from it all. You get back to it all. You come home to what’s important. You come home to yourself.’

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Peter Dombrovskis

‘… we moved in a glittering, sun-splashed world where living assumed a clarity and intensity unknown in ordinary city-bound existence. Our bodies became attuned to rock and rapid, our senses easily absorbed the roar of white-water, the silent greens of the rainforest. My steadily growing skill at negotiating obstacles bolstered my self-confidence and eased the shyness of adolescence.’

‘An ethic of the land is needed because the remaining wilderness, that which makes this island truly unique, is threatened by commercial exploitation that will destroy its value to future generations. Machines are already shattering the silence of ages, invading the last forests and damming and drowning the wild rivers and gorges.’

‘We must try to retain as much as possible of what still remains of the unique, rare and beautiful. Is there any reason why … the ideal of beauty could not become an accepted goal of national policy? Is there any reason why Tasmania should not be more beautiful on the day we leave it than on the day we came? … if we can accept the role of steward and depart from the role of conqueror; if we can accept the view that man and nature are inseparable parts of the unified whole, then Tasmania can be a shining beacon in a dull, uniform and largely artificial world.’

The photograph (above), Morning mist, Rock Island Bend, Franklin River, Tasmania (1979), is one of the most celebrated landscape photographs in Australian history. Commissioned by Bob Brown (later to become leader of the Greens Party), this image became synonymous with the successful campaign of the 1980s to prevent the damming of the Franklin River for hydro-electric development. It appeared on posters with the memorable yellow, triangular slogan ‘NO DAMS’ and showed Australians what would be lost under the waters of a dam should the hydroelectric scheme go ahead. Using his camera as a tool, Dombrovskis shared with society the riches that they would forgo if the environment was not protected.

The photograph below, Mount Geryon from the Labyrinth Cradle, Mountain-Lake St Clair National Park, Tasmania (1986) is an image that Bob Brown had in his office at a similarly large scale to provide an immediate and memorable talking point with visitors.

Many Australians encountered these images for the first time in prosaic settings: in a newspaper campaign advertisement, a diary used at work, a calendar on the side of the fridge, or a poster in a waiting room. Most of us will never visit the places he photographed, but into our ordinary everyday lives his images bring something of the beauty and the power of the wild places of Tasmania. Seldom in the history of photography has there been such a clear example of visual culture having such a political sway.

Exhibition label

Installation views of the opening of the exhibition Dombrovskis: journeys into the wild at Monash Gallery of Art, Wheelers Hill

Peter Dombrovskis (Australian, born Germany 1945-96)Mount Geryon from the Labyrinth, Du Cane Range, Tasmania
1986
Courtesy of the National Library of Australia and the Estate of Peter Dombrovskis

Installation view of the exhibition Dombrovskis: journeys into the wild at Monash Gallery of Art, Wheelers Hill

Installation view of the exhibition Dombrovskis: journeys into the wild at Monash Gallery of Art, Wheelers Hill showing at left, Coastline north of the Pieman River, Tarkine wilderness, Tasmania (1992); at centre Kelp detail, Macquarie Island, Tasmania (1984); and at right Drying kelp at Sandy Bay, Macquarie Island, Tasmania (1984)

Peter Dombrovskis (1945-96) was one of the world’s foremost wilderness photographers. His powerful, reflective and deeply personal images of the unique Tasmanian wilderness had a lasting impact, changing the way Australians think about their environment by making remote nature accessible through images.

Dombrovskis: journeys into the wild draws together a vast sweep of nearly 80 images, shown for the first time in Victoria. The exhibition was initially developed by the National Library of Australia from their comprehensive collection of Dombrovskis’s work.

Through their use in environmental campaigns, Dombrovskis’s images have become shorthand for environmental concerns in Australia. Particularly memorable was the image Morning Mist, Rock Island Bend that Bob Brown (later to become Leader of the Greens Party) used in the ‘No Dams’ campaign to save the Franklin River.

Seldom in the history of photography has there been as clear an example of visual culture bearing such political sway and prompting such passion in communities.

‘Dombrovskis’s ability to capture the sublime beauty of the Tasmanian wilderness led to his work becoming synonymous with the Tasmanian Wilderness conservation movement. Dombrovskis once commented “photography is, quite simply, a means of communicating my concern for the beauty of the Earth.” His work was his voice and it powerfully evoked his passion for the environment which inspired the nation to work for its protection. MGA is thrilled to have an opportunity to showcase Dombrovskis’s practice to Victorian audiences, and to inspire a new generation to embrace his unique vision and celebrate his legacy.’ ~ Anouska Phizacklea, MGA Director

This exhibition was initially developed by the National Library of Australia, Canberra. In 2007, the Library acquired over 3000 colour transparencies that make up the Dombrovskis archive. The photographs on display here, which are also part of the Library’s Pictures Collection, were printed by Les Walkling on Canson Platine Fibre Rag paper by an Epson SureColor P20070.

Monash Gallery of Art and the National Library of Australia would like to acknowledge Peter’s widow, Liz Dombrovskis, and thank her for her guidance and support for this project.

Installation view of the exhibition Dombrovskis: journeys into the wild at Monash Gallery of Art, Wheelers Hill showing Myrtle tree in rainforest at Mount Anne, Southwest National Park, Tasmania (1984)

Peter Dombrovskis (Australian, born Germany 1945-96)Myrtle tree in rainforest at Mount Anne, Southwest National Park, Tasmania
1984
Courtesy of the National Library of Australia and the Estate of Peter Dombrovskis

Peter Dombrovskis (Australian, born Germany 1945-96)Morning light on Little Horn, Cradle Mountain-Lake St Clair National Park, Tasmania
1995
Courtesy of the National Library of Australia and the Estate of Peter Dombrovskis

Installation view of the exhibition Dombrovskis: journeys into the wild at Monash Gallery of Art, Wheelers Hill showing at left, Snow gum on the Labyrinth, Du Cane Range, Tasmania (1988); and at right Shore lichen on granite, east Freycinet, Freycinet National Park, Tasmania (1989)

Installation view of the exhibition Dombrovskis: journeys into the wild at Monash Gallery of Art, Wheelers Hill

Peter Dombrovskis (Australian, born Germany 1945-96)Pencil pine at Pool of Siloam, Walls of Jerusalem National Park, Tasmania
1982
Courtesy of the National Library of Australia and the Estate of Peter Dombrovskis

Peter Dombrovskis

Peter Herbert Dombrovskis was born in a World War II refugee camp in Wiesbaden, Germany, in 1945 to Latvian parents. His father, Karl, went missing at the end of the war and in 1950 his mother, Adele, moved the pair of them to Hobart, Tasmania; as far from the war-torn Europe and the war as imaginable. Adele was a keen naturalist and encouraged Peter’s photography, buying him a 35mm Zeiss camera to experiment with when he was just six.

In the early 1970s, Dombrovskis established a working pattern of making five or six two-week journeys into the wilds of Tasmania each year. His first calendar was produced in 1972, his first diary in 1976 and his first book The quiet land in 1977. He set up his own publication company, West Wind Press, in 1977. His second wife Liz, continued to run West Wind Press, producing calendars, books and diaries, until 2009. In 1996, while hiking and photographing near Mount Hayes in south-west Tasmania’s Western Arthur Range, Dombrovskis suffered a heart attack and died. He was 51 years old.

The sublime

The photographs of Dombrovskis carry on a rich tradition of depicting the wild places of Tasmania as Romantic landscapes. Romanticism was a cultural movement in the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries that emphasised the senses, emotion and spontaneity at the expense of order, rationality and intellect. Particularly influential was the Romantic idea of the sublime. Unlike the picturesque landscape, which was attractive and charming but tame and unthreatening, the sublime landscape dramatises nature’s overwhelming power and grandeur. It shows the natural world untouched and uncompromised by human intervention, provoking feelings of awe, even fear, and reminding the viewer that wilderness is a valuable resource to respect, not exploit. Dombrovskis’s images demonstrate nature’s powerful splendour but they also have a quiet, reflective quality that draws the viewer into an intimate conversation with the natural world. This is, perhaps, achieved through his habit of including the unexpected and sensitive details within a landscape, as well as the marvellous and dramatic vistas. Dombrovskis was passionate about the vast and rugged beauty of his adopted home, but also curious about nature, seeing it as both mysterious and welcoming.

Influences

The photographer most often connected with Dombrovskis is Olegas Truchanas. The two men shared backgrounds as refugees from war-torn Central Europe. Together the two would explore Tasmania, marvelling at and photographing the beauty of their natural surroundings. They were adventurers and photographers in equal measures and both died in pursuit of these passions. It was Truchanas who introduced Peter to the political nature of landscape photography. In the 1960s, he would stage slide-shows in the Hobart City Hall, pairing his images with classical music and speaking about society’s responsibility for the natural planet. Many of Truchanas’s slides were lost in a bushfire that took his home in 1967, and it was in 1972, when he was out rebuilding his archive of images of the south-west that he drowned in the Gordon River. It was Peter who found Truchanas’s body in the water after days of searching.

‘I like to think I’m carrying on where Olegas left off, in my own way, finishing the work that he started.’

Dombrovskis’s photographic style was also influenced by the great American landscape photographers:

‘I enjoy Ansel Adams for his finely controlled and logical composition; Edward Weston for his intense identification with subject matter; Brett Weston for his strikingly graphic structural forms; Paul Caponigro for images that intimate the mysterious and the unknowable; and Eliot Porter for compositional subtlety and delicate colour harmony.’

Legacy

Dombrovskis’s contribution to the environmental movement is profound but his technical ability and artistry as a photographer are equally celebrated. In February 2003, he was inducted into the International Photography Hall of Fame in Oklahoma City, an honour afforded to only 76 other innovators in the art form’s history. He is the only Australian to be honoured in this way and sits alongside those who influenced him, such as Ansel Adams and Edward and Brett Weston and Eliot Porter. Dombrovskis’s work has been acquired by several of Australia’s major cultural institutions and is part of the collections of the National Library of Australia, National Gallery of Australia, National Gallery of Victoria, Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery and Monash Gallery of Art.

Equipment

Dombrovskis’s preferred camera was the Linhof Master Technika. Requiring 4 x 5 inch film, almost 16 times larger than that used in a standard 35mm camera, the Linhof was heavy and cumbersome, forcing Dombrovskis to take more care and time in setting up his shots and making each of these images the result of physical and mental endurance, as well as involved decision-making.

‘… because sheet film is expensive and loading it is slow and tedious, I seldom take more than one exposure of each subject. This occasionally leads to bitter regret when I misjudge exposure after spending, perhaps, an hour on a single image.’

Smaller 35mm or contemporary digital cameras would have allowed Dombrovskis ease of use and immediacy, but this would have come at the expense of the extraordinary detail he could achieve with his Linhof. When walking for a week in the wilderness, Dombrovskis carried the required supplies, as well as the camera and around 50 sheets of film; a heavy pack in rugged terrain.

Tasmania

‘I took photographs for the simple pleasure of recording objects and places that were important to me, and because the discipline of photography increased my awareness of Tasmania’s beauty and made me appreciate more clearly the value of its wilderness.’

The work of Dombrovskis helped to change perceptions of the Tasmanian wilderness. In 1982 the area that he photographed was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List as part of the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area. His photograph Morning Mist, Rock Island Bend, Franklin River, Tasmania (1979), which is located at the beginning of this exhibition, was integral to the successful campaign to prevent the Tasmanian Hydro Electric Commission damming the Gordon and Franklin rivers.

Dombrovskis’s photographs showed Australians what would be lost under the waters of a dam should the hydroelectric scheme go ahead, and many credit this image as helping to sway the Federal election in favour of Bob Hawke’s Australian Labor Party, which promised to save the Franklin River. It is rare and noteworthy that a photograph might carry such social and political sway.

Peter Dombrovskis (Australian, born Germany 1945-96)Red phase of deciduous beech, ‘Nothofagus gunnii’, Cradle Mountain-Lake St. Clair National Park, Tasmania1988
Courtesy of the National Library of Australia and the Estate of Peter Dombrovskis

Installation views of the exhibition Dombrovskis: journeys into the wild at Monash Gallery of Art, Wheelers Hill

Peter Dombrovskis (Australian, born Germany 1945-96)Frost on snow berry (Gaultheria hispida) leaves, Milles Track, Mount Wellington, Tasmania, June 1990
1990
Courtesy of the National Library of Australia and the Estate of Peter Dombrovskis

Installation views of the exhibition Dombrovskis: journeys into the wild at Monash Gallery of Art, Wheelers Hill

Installation view of the exhibition Dombrovskis: journeys into the wild at Monash Gallery of Art, Wheelers Hill showing at left, Limestone pinnacles on Mount Api, Sarawak, Borneo (1985); and at right, Reflections in mist, Walls of Jerusalem National Park, Tasmania (1994)

Peter Dombrovskis (Australian, born Germany 1945-96)Lake Oberon, Western Arthur Range, Southwest National Park, Tasmania
1988
Courtesy of the National Library of Australia and the Estate of Peter Dombrovskis

Peter Dombrovskis (Australian, born Germany 1945-96)Richea scoparia in bloom below Halls Buttress, Walls of Jerusalem National Park, Tasmania1992
Courtesy of the National Library of Australia and the Estate of Peter Dombrovskis

Peter Dombrovskis (Australian, born Germany 1945-96)Cushion plants, Mount Anne, Southwest National Park, Tasmania
1984
Courtesy of the National Library of Australia and the Estate of Peter Dombrovskis

Dr Marcus Bunyan

Dr Marcus Bunyan is an Australian artist and writer. His art work explores the boundaries of identity and place. He writes Art Blart, a photographic archive and form of cultural memory, which posts mainly photography exhibitions from around the world. He holds a Dr of Philosophy from RMIT University, Melbourne, a Master of Arts (Fine Art Photography) from RMIT University, and a Master of Art Curatorship from the University of Melbourne.